Important Notice

Combining personal experience and imagination, Shibu Natesan's body of work strives to document the contemporary human condition, exploring individual displacement and alienation and questioning social constructs and the violence they cause. Drawing images from sources that range from historical archives to the current news media, the artist revels in juxtaposing seemingly unrelated elements on his large- format canvases to probe the validity of... Combining personal experience and imagination, Shibu Natesan's body of work strives to document the contemporary human condition, exploring individual displacement and alienation and questioning social constructs and the violence they cause. Drawing images from sources that range from historical archives to the current news media, the artist revels in juxtaposing seemingly unrelated elements on his large- format canvases to probe the validity of perception and belief. By unsettling the world-view of his audience, Natesan challenges the authenticity of received information.

The artist "…works through a particular method of startling photographic simulation of the real. It is then rendered tense and evocative through an unexpected elision of symbols. In this way, he challenges the comfort of recognition... he brings in taut metaphors of physical domination and power structures in a world of moral contestation… the presence of the predator and the hunted, and the ever present, if passive, spectator. Thus… all violent action becomes spectatorial, and all assumptions of power are asserted as moral positions" (Gayatri Sinha, "Talks, works and realism", The Hindu, February 4, 2005).

The present lot is part of Natesan's critically acclaimed series of large-format canvases titled Existence of Instinct, executed in 2004, where he juxtaposed images of wild creatures with those of the man-made world. In this canvas, the artist confronts his viewers with the part-uninterested, part-hostile stare of four robed Bedouins calmly grouped around what seems to be their pet cheetah. Shaken out of their complacency by the imposing dimensions and challenging content this desert scene, viewers are pushed to interrogate the nature of power and vulnerability, freedom and captivity, as well as their own locations in the constant moral tussle between them.

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